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Badlands Author Challenges Critics: Debate the Evidence

By David Fraser, “Badlands”

Kim Workman’s criticism of me reveals with startling clarity the weakness of his case. It is irrelevant whether an author is ‘known’ or ‘unknown’ – what matters is whether the arguments he puts forward are backed up by the evidence.

The proper way to criticise my thesis is to present sound evidence which shows that the conclusions I have reached in the book ‘Badlands’ are questionable or wrong. He and others are free to do this. Surely, this is the way for this debate to be carried out. But when the only criticisms put forward are of a personal nature, such as those recently made by Workman, it indicates that he has no such evidence. I am not surprised.

I have spent years researching the results of the UK’s sentencing policies and for the last three years those of New Zealand. What these enquiries have revealed is that the thousands of persistent offenders in New Zealand who are placed back in the community every year, many on some form of supervision, continue to commit an enormous number of crimes. Claims for the success of supervision programmes for offenders do not survive scrutiny. Likewise accumulated evidence (quoted in the book) shows that longer prison sentences are associated with much reduced reconviction rates. Even so, recently published research from the UK shows that even short prison sentences are more effective at protecting the public than community based offender programmes.

Critics such as Workman, frequently state they disagree with my arguments. My answer is that unless they have good evidence to show my conclusions are faulty, they are not in a position to disagree. I tell them that what they mean is that they do not like my conclusions, because they conflict with their cherished beliefs and ideology. Many of us – me included – may not like the results of these objective investigations – but we cannot go on ignoring the impact that crime has on the general public. Workman clearly does not like the results of the analysis presented in the book, because it conflicts with his belief that criminals are victims of circumstance and need help rather than punishment. We must not base sentencing policies on beliefs and personal ideologies, but on the evidence which tells us which sentences protect the public and which do not. For the last 50 years New Zealand sentencing polices have been based on wrong ideas about crime and criminals – ideas which Workman wants to perpetuate.

I have never published in an academic journal because I have never needed to or wanted to - because I am not a professional academic. But this does not impact on the assessment, positive or otherwise, of the arguments contained in the book. Let Workman (and others) focus on that and produce reliable data to show that non-custodial sentences for persistent offenders do protect the public. He won’t of course because it does not exist. Had it done so, I would have found it by now and reported on it in ‘Badlands’. If Workman thinks that only professional academics should publish books of this kind he has allowed the phoney mystique many of them project to befuddle his thinking. My argument (put forward in my first book in 2006) that community supervision of persistent offenders puts the public at great risk by exposing them to non-stop crime, has never been refuted by officialdom or academics. They have all kept their heads down and remained silent, because they know there is no evidence to contradict my case. Perhaps Workman should do the same.

For the record his remarks about me are all factually incorrect. I have never described myself as an expert in anything, international or otherwise. This is a label given to me by others. He is wrong when he says I am unknown to ‘criminal justice experts and academics’. I am. What Workman means I think, is that I am not a member of the criminal justice anti-prison establishment. Without meaning to he has underlined the central purpose of the book which is to examine the problems of crime and punishment through the eyes of the public as opposed to criminal justice ‘insiders’.

He is also wrong to say I left the probation service having made ‘absolutely no impression’. Many past (and probably some present) Chief Probation Officers throughout the UK will tell him otherwise. I was known to many of them – notoriously so- for my insistence in pointing out the harmful effects of their policies on the vulnerable public. In parallel to this I pioneered a number of projects during my career, including rehabilitation programmes for jailed offenders, well before such ideas became fashionable, but long since accepted as general policy.

My first book was reviewed extensively in the UK and in the United States. It was covered by all the major news outlets on the radio, TV stations and was given wide circulation in the press. For the last 5 years I have been called upon by various radio and TV news outlets to comment on criminal justice matters. This hardly fits with the description of someone ‘unknown’. But even if I was it would have no bearing on the merit or otherwise of the book.

ENDS

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